Scenes from married life

I was very excited about going to bed on Friday night so that I could wake up and eat bread rolls for breakfast.

I got 6 for $2.

Vicky was pretty chuffed, too.

the list

Hello, dear friends. 

I know it has been a long time in-between blogs but I have been waiting for nice copies of the wedding "run-sheets" (is there a more romantic word for those?) from the celebrant. You know what I mean: nicely decorated lists of what's to happen when at the ceremony, including the vows, the speeches and the escape clauses. These are yet to arrive, four weeks later, but this is probably fair enough. There was something of a shemozzle and something of a mix-up on the day, which has necessitated the creation of new, accurate records of the event.

If you weren't there, I'll probably cover the clustermuck-up when I post the schedules. If you were there and you didn't notice - awesome.  

Anyhow, I wanted to post these so that you all could re-live the magic, or experience it for the first time if you couldn't make it. As they remain unavailable at this time, here is a list of the songs from the wedding instead.

Guests arrived at the ceremony to the sounds of Fleet Foxes' Fleet Foxes.

Vicky walked down the aisle to Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks.

As we signed our marriage contracts, we played i like the way this is going by the eels and I Will by The Beatles and Heart goes Pitter Patter by Simone and Girlfunkle.

Our recessional was Living in Colour by Frightened Rabbit.

Guests arrived at the reception venue (I hope - I wasn't there to check) to Impossible Soul by Sufjan Stevens.

Then, these:

Love - John Lennon 

Grand Parade - The Reindeer Section 

Go - Sparklehorse With The Flaming Lips 

Cheek to Cheek - Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong 

The Luckiest - Ben Folds 

If Not For You - George Harrison 

Satellite Of Love - Lou Reed 

Here, There And Everywhere - The Beatles 

Can't Help Falling In Love - Eels 

Oh My Love - John Lennon 

Feeling Good - Nina Simone 

Tonight, Tonight - Smashing Pumpkins 

Fresh Feeling - Eels 

Perfection As A Hipster - God Help The Girl 

Untidy Towns - The Lucksmiths 

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel 

Someone So Much - Bob Evans 

Modern Marriage (Demo) - Pulp 

Secret Meeting - The National 

Golden Brown - The Stranglers 

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths 

Friday I'm In Love - The Cure 

Fidelity - Regina Spektor 

Victoria - The Kinks 

Big Jumps - Emiliana Torrini 

She's A Rainbow - The Rolling Stones 

2:1 - Elastica 

It's Alright - Sons Of Rico 

Good Fortune - PJ Harvey 

King of Spain - The Tallest Man On Earth 

The Word - The Beatles 

Babies - Pulp 

People Take Pictures Of Each Other - The Kinks 

Adolescent Song Of Mindless Devotion - The Lucksmiths 

Australia - The Shins 

Mr. E's Beautiful Blues - Eels 

It's Oh So Quiet - Björk 

Got To Get You Into My Life - The Beatles 

You're My Best Friend - Queen 

Tiergarten - Rufus Wainwright 

Days - The Kinks 

I Wish That I Was Beautiful For You - Darren Hanlon 

Sing - Blur 

All Mine - Portishead 

Happy Days - The Tigers 

Try Not To Breathe - R.E.M. 

Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye - Leonard Cohen 

In My Life - The Beatles 

Little Wonder - Augie March 

Road To Joy - Bright Eyes 

The One You Love - Rufus Wainwright 

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1 - The Flaming Lips 

Swans - Camera Obscura 

Ice Cream Man - Tom Waits 

Connection - Elastica 

Jungle Drum - Emiliana Torrini 

Start Me Up - The Rolling Stones 

Lust For Life - Iggy Pop 

Sunshine Of Your Love - Cream 

Disco 2000 - Pulp 

Don't Go Breaking My Heart - Elton John & Kiki Dee 

Kiss - Prince 

Ringo (I Feel Like...) - Custard 

The Lovecats - The Cure 

Sonnet No. 3 (Like A Duck) - MC Honky 

! (The Song Formerly Known As) - Regurgitator 

She's My Man - Scissor Sisters 

ABC - The Jackson 5 

The Power of Love - Huey Lewis and the News 

Crazy In Love - Beyoncé 

Parklife - Blur 

Informer - Snow 

Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough - Michael Jackson 

Common People - Pulp 

Get Ur Freak On - Eels 

Dizzy Miss Lizzy - The Beatles 

All Shook Up - Elvis Presley 

Age of Adz - Sufjan Stevens 

I Get A Kick Out Of You - Frank Sinatra 

Heart Goes Pitter Patter - Simone & Girlfunkle 

Don't Look Back In Anger - Oasis 

Stand By Me - John Lennon 

Losing Streak - Eels 

First Day Of My Life - Bright Eyes 

All Of My Friends Were There - The Kinks 

Do You Remember The First Time? - Pulp 

Glory Box - Portishead 

There's Too Much Love - Belle & Sebastian 

True Love Will Find You in the End - Beck 

Never Let Go - Tom Waits 

Let's Get Out Of This Country - Camera Obscura 

End Of The Line - Traveling Wilburys 

Leave - R.E.M. 

Notes On Leaving - Darren Hanlon 

I Like Birds - Eels

How Bizarre - OMC

Note, however, that if I ever get to guest-program rage, it'll be different from the list above. There'll be a lot more RUN DMC.

Signs I married the right woman #17

Home-made gin & walnut ice-cream, made magnificently ginny.

Committed (nuptial man)

Hello, so, it turns out that last weekend the world didn't end, as portended for the third time by that mad Harold Camping fellow, and I got married. All up, that's a pretty successful weekend, I'd say. 

Also, never fear, loyal follower! Not only did the world not end but this blog won't neither! At least not straightaway, anyway. Inspired by the one lovely wedding guest who told me to keep this beast rumbling, I plan to upload a few blogs over the coming weeks reflecting on how awesome the wedding went (and how awesome it is to be married), the awesome things that went on and were said on the day, some awesome photographs and other assorted awesome ephemera for anybody who's interested.

Hopefully those posts'll be, you know, quite good or thereabouts. 

And, who knows, perhaps I will eventually commence uploading my worried thoughts as prenatal man? (Calm down mum, this'll be years away.)

I shall start this one with a few of the lessons I have learned, having now been through a wedding, for the benefit of other prenuptial men out there:

1. Practise your chalkpersonship before the morning of the wedding. This is particularly important if you plan on having a blackboard with directions for guests.
2. If you are having a cocktail-style wedding, ask your venue to put a plate of food aside for you and the wife. Your mouth will be too busy talking to eat and you'll miss out on most of the delicious goodies you carefully selected.
3. Don't be fooled into thinking that, because you are not doing full speeches, you can get away with a hastily-scribbled note of thank-yous. You will forget to thank some people and feel rotten about it for days afterward. This includes your friends who got there early to help set up chairs, your other friends who stayed back late to help remove chairs, and your cousin who flew all the way from the UK just for the weekend and whom you didn't get much of a chance to chat with. Clearly, these are people who should be thanked and praised.
4. You will probably be doomed from the start if you try to talk to everybody at the reception. You'll most likely end up talking to most people not nearly enough, rudely ceasing conversations to move onto the next guests and repeat. Instead, focus on those people who travelled the farthest to be there and whom you see least often. You can catch up with your regular chums at the post-wedding pub hoedown a following weekend. 
5. You'll forget heaps of stuff, like leaving the caketoppers in the hotel room. Luckily you'll also have many friends and relatives willing to help out with your mini-crises, like your dad, who'll ransack your hotel room to try to find those caketoppers while you have a good time not talking to enough people.
6. Getting married and having a big party is fucking fantastic. Stop putting it off. If you've nabbed the right one, don't lose her. 

I was going to write something about regrets as well but it's late now and I'm lazy so I'll save it for next post. In the meantime, look at these awesome pics uploaded by our awesome photographer. These are just some of the advanced previews, note, so there should be loads more coming.

It's only right that the rest of the world sees how tremendously beautiful Vicky looks. 

I have tried on the wedding ring and she is good.

The wedding is tomorrow. I'm surprisingly calm, which means that I alternate from relatively calm to outlandishly wired. What? That is totally a surprise.

Anyhow, I thought I would do one last prenuptial man update for those of you who are still paying attention. In case you are curious, I have tried on the wedding ring and she is good. Whereas Vicky's ring was made up special to fit snugly against her engagement ring, I have had my great-grandpappy's ring (with the french engraving inside preserved - "Alice et Roland unis le 15-9-28") resized to fit my well-nourished chubbers. 

Wearing the ring helps reduce a lot of the anxiety I have about tomorrow. When I put it on, it feels nice, looks grand and I feel that I could easily get used to it. 

I don't know why that helps but, then again, I don't really know why I'm anxious either.

See you on the other side. 

On second thoughts and Plans B.

Thinking about the totally pimp ceremony I wrote about in the last post, it occurs to me now that such extravagant fripperies may detract, rather than add to, the simple wonderment of the occasion. 

Instead we really should go with the original plan: some heartfelt personal vows while girt by loved ones.

And no, this decision is not only due to our reluctant decision to shift our ceremony one suburb over. Sure, it will be hard to pull off a lot of the last post's majesty now that we will be hosting the ceremony outside in the splendour of nature but, in honest seriousness, I think we are both better served by simplicity and authenticity, regardless of where we commit. 

Also, so why have we bitten the bitter eggplant and relocated our nuptials?

Although the temporary fencing has been removed from Kidogo and we can now access the building, it still remains adjacent to the ruins of its previous surrounding topography. On the northern side, there remains a triad of bright blue portaloos, which should be downwind. We tried to overlook this through sheer bloody-mindedness. The building is still wonderful once you get inside. 

Unfortunately, the sound of stuff-hammering, angle-grinding, sand-vacuuming, cat-calling, nose-honking and ill-informed politicking follows you in. It ruins the atmosphere a little.

Even if one could block out the sound (one can't), it requires a leap of faith concerning access to the building. The City of Fremantle has advised that "there could possibly be a problem with access" as "Western Power will be digging  in the access way at some stage", though they don't know when this would happen.

Weighing up the risk that we may face litigation as our guests injure themselves either long-jumping or tightrope-walking to our ceremony, Vicky and I have decided to take our business elsewhere. 

Personally, I think that once they dig the trench, they ought to fill it with fire and hoist up a Sad Roger pirate flag as a warning to others that the Kidogo Arthouse is now a no-go zone of death. What was once an inspiring sanctuary for the creative arts is now a place where hopes and dreams atrophy, are garrotted, stuffed into undersized potato sacks, bashed with lead pipes and buried, only half-dead, in shallow graves underneath those trees that drop loads of sticky berries. 

I have tried to change the entry on google maps to a description like the one above but my hacking skills are not as good as they used to be, back when everything was straight HTML.

The Azelia Ley Homestead, in the City of Cockburn, is now the proud host of our wedding ceremony.  Azelia Ley, who was a Manning, built the house with her own husband from 1915 to 1923. Then, while a kooky old bat, well read and dressed all in black, she used to stand on its verandah and take pot-shots at anybody she thought was trespassing. You can see why it appeals.

I bet the place is haunted by her now. I'll be scrutinising our photos carefully afterward to see if she's in any.  

I've attached below a picture a kid drew of the homestead. I bet Kidogo never inspired a child to draw it. 

We won't be inside the building. That's now a boring museum. We will be married in the glorious, great outdoors in a true-blue Australian setting.

It better not fucking rain. 

vajazzling your ceremony

Our wedding ceremony is looming. Both Vicky and I are excited and terrified. It's the part of the whole shebang that makes us actually married, just like magic. We walk into the place, the power-infused celebrant incants a few words and *bamf* - we are officially married. 

Bearing that in mind, it does seem as if all the planning we've done for it so far, and we truly have done a tremendous lot, has, nevertheless, been a bit lacklustre. 

I think we need a more intricate affair, one with extra pomp.

For starters, perhaps we need to hand out hooded robes to our guests, so that they may look appropriately charmed. Vicky's entrance into the venue will be preceded by mysterious barefoot druids, each waving about a thurible. These should probably be filled with super-power-providing toxic ooze. While I wait near the altar, buffeted by a wind machine, I'll spin the dial on my omnitrix to the appropriate position. Europe's The Final Countdown will blare from enormous speakers in the corners of the room.

Vicky will enter riding a well-behaved unicorn that will wait patiently in the corner after she slides off its back to take her place by my side. 

Our celebrant, shaved and tattooed, should recite the vows in latin and backwards while spinning counter-clockwise on one leg. Vicky and I will both take a step forward, over a red-and-white spotted smiling mushroom and cry "inyuk-chuk!" to increase in size. 

So embiggened, I'll pull a sword from a stone, hand it (handle first!) to the celebrant, and kneel on one leg. She'll rest it on each shoulder and, by the Power of Greyskull, proclaim me as worthy. I'll be told to arise and then Vicky and I will exchange rings, whereupon we will both blink out of sight and enter a bewildering negative world of burning shadows.  None of this will daunt our stoic celebrant who will tap each of us in the chest with a glowing index finger, returning us to plain view, and proclaim us as husband and wife. Standing up and shouting "shazam!" while moving our hands in the appropriate sequences, Vicky and I will shoot into the air, surrounded by blinking motifs, soaring music and stock zinging sound effects. Our clothes will rip off to reveal our wedding costumes beneath. Also, now I have fire-eyes. 

The oompa-loompas will burn our marriage banns, adding a special chemical to make the smoke white, so that the gathering faithful outside will know that their wait is over. We will emerge as butterflies out of the cocoon of singledom. 

That, I think, is more suitable, considering the significance. 

Also candles; we'll need more candles.

The ring - the end.

Now that I have written about my stunningly amateurish proposal, I can share the result with the world.

Vicky's finger has gone from this:

- to this:

And I'll tell you another thing: it's a blimming good thing that I went about it the way I did. I never would have picked out an oval marquis cut diamond but that is precisely what Vicky wanted, when we went into the jewellers and designed it together (mostly Vick). Let that be a lesson to all you cocky bastards.

Of course, it took months for the jeweller to make the custom ring, which was maddeningly unimpressive, but that's another story. It's not a very interesting story, either, so you won't read about it here. 

How long?

As of today, there is less that one month until I get married (and/or the world ends).

Holey Moley.

The proposal.

Hello. Some good friends of mine have recently pointed out that I never concluded the saga of Vicky's engagement ring. I thought most people had given up on reading the blog, lost among the endless drivel about shoes, so it was nice to hear otherwise. Of course, these same friends were very quick to point out that they got lost among the endless drivel about shoes, so I will refrain from posting other tailoring tips. This was good feedback; thank you, fellows!

Now, instead, some more nonsense about the ring. You may recall that I decided against buying Vicky's ring as surprise in the proposal, instead deciding to stuff a brilliantly-crafted proposal poem into a ring box. I also embarrassingly asked Vicky's parents' answering machine for its blessing, but that was humiliating and not crucial to this stage of the story. I also foreshadowed that my next challenge was to get an engagement-ring box to hold the poem, without paying for an unnecessary engagement ring. I'll get to that in a moment. 

Instead, let me tell you about another wonderful wonder.

Although immensely proud of the poem I wrung out, I still felt that it wasn't quite enough. I am quite partial to romantic tales of penniless ne'er-do-wells actually, well, doing well, and surprising beloveds with ingenious proposals. You know, engagement rings made from spoons or onion rings, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, I am not especially crafty and don't enjoy inflicting second-degree burns on the unworthy. A poem is about all I'm good for. 

The thing is, Vick couldn't very well wrap a poem around her finger and show her family while breathlessly announcing the engagement. It'd get sweaty and difficult to read.  I needed another band-aid solution until such time as she could get her actual ring. Luckily, I chanced across the perfect interim product:

It's a band-aid with a diamond embossed onto it, if that's not immediately clear.

It ends up looking a bit like this:

It turns that I am also quite handy at getting lucky in fashionable stores full of unnecessary goods. 

To get my hands on this tasty piece of French artistry, I had to change my clothes on my lunch break at work, cycle across town (note - town not very big, so it's not too much amazing) stink out a fashionable hipster store with my bike-stink (remember - Perth gets up to 40 degrees Celsius in December), purchase  a solitary band-aid, ride back to work, shower, get changed - all in under an hour - and try to resume working without a mighty smirk. Oh, the dedication! It bodes well for marriage commitment, I think. 

(It turns out I am also pretty neat at over-emphasising minor achievements.)

With both a poem expressing my love and commitment, and a band-aid symbolising my stop-gap approach to risk-management, I felt suitably confident that this proposal could win a heart and was good enough for a woman of great consequence. 

We flash-forward to Xmas morning, 2010. The previous night, Vicky's mother had told me that it'd be terrific if I proposed to their daughter. I have a magic band-aid and the greatest poem I've ever written  stuffed into my substitute ring-box. I am still marvellously, preposterously nervous. 

Vicky and I awake and share season's greetings. We head downstairs, still in our pyjamas,  to see what Santa had brought us, and what we had bought each other, and if the cats think their own presents are acceptable. It's nerve-destroyingly delightful. 

All gifts exchanged, I tell Vicky that I have one more thing for her and head upstairs to get it. I get properly dressed in a crisp white shirt and tie. I want to maximise my chances but dressing like this is perhaps not a great idea: it's stinking hot already, our house has no air-conditioning and poor insulation and I am supremely nervous. I am a sweaty boy at the best of times. 

I tell Vicky to close her eyes. I head downstairs in a soggy, translucent shirt with my tie already loosened. I am sweating monsoons. I kneel before her and tell her to open her eyes. Vicky sees my state of dress and smiles, radiant with happiness and pity. She's positively beaming.

I mumble something incoherent about her doing me a great honour. Given everything else I fretted over in the lead up to this moment, this part is surprisingly unprepared. 

I whip out my love package. I neglect to open it in the traditional style. (Last minute doubt about the disappointment of seeing only paper inside.)

Vicky says, "is that your cufflinks box?"

And that's truly all I remember.

Heartwarming, innit? Can't you just feel your cockles smoulder? One for the ages, I reckon.

Of course, it soon became obvious that she'd also said 'yes' somewhere in all the confusion. We spent ages smooching and smiling and holding hands on the couch. These are not the actions of a recently rebuffed man. Just to make sure, however, I've asked her several times since. It's always a good answer. 

How to choose your booze.

A couple of weekends ago, Vicky and I blackmailed our families into meeting each other under cover of a wine-sampling party to decide on a list for the wedding. It went quite well. Blurry, but well. I think. 

I thought I should post a list of the things we learned about wine and how we reached our final decision on what to serve:

1. After the first glass, it all tastes even more like the same. 

Fin.

Top this!

Hot on the heels of yesterday's post about our wedding cakes, here is some information about the cake-toppers. I meant to make it all one long post but I got hungry and had to take a snack break. Then I had to go to the pub.

You may recall that Vicky and I had a lovers' tiff about whether to have Legoes or trolldolls adorning our wedding cake as tiny representatives of our good selves. You might also recall that the only princess Lego piece I had came wearing one of those stupid pointed princess hats (or 'hennin' if you're a fetishist), which made it a bit unrepresentative. Sure, Vick and I are both fond of a good fancy hat, but an angled, conical, upturned flowerpot is going a bit far.

However, thanks to the modern wonder that is internet nerdery, I have been able to purchase another princess Lego that is a much better approximation:

Of course, the original jaundiced smile remains best for me.

Now, before you go thinking that, without consultation, I spent too much money on a single piece of Lego in an attempt to force Vicky to my way of thinking, lest those funds be wasted, I'd like to point out that the princess is made up of at least 8 separate pieces. She also comes with an ingenious interchangeable face. Nertz.

Also, you forgetful bastard, as written in yesterday's blog, we are having at least two - probably more - cakes. This is magnificently symbolic. As Vicky and I are both pretty indecisive, we usually compromise in this way on most things, so why not for our wedding? I get to put awesome Legoes on one cake and Vicky can put hideous mythical beasts with awful hair on the other. Win-win!

The possible third cake will come in handy too. While traipsing about the UK earlier this year, I managed to drag Vicky into a comic-book store for a few minutes. She amused herself by purchasing a mystery 'kidrobot' Best Friends Forever box. Inside, she was astonished to discover, were a best-friend cupcake and fork ensemble called Eddie and Sprinkles.

Ever since, these have been discussed as potential wedding caketoppers, especially considering our cupcake cascade cake.

Sure, our names are neither Eddie nor Sprinkles but, then again, nor do we have zany hair or fixed crablike claws topping arms set at 45-degree angles.

Eddie and Sprinkles are also wonderfully interactive. Just like real best buds, they are interlockable:

And come with a lovely love slogan:

I am totally the fork, by the by.

With three potential cake-topping options, it will assist greatly to have three cakes, though I can foresee troubles ahead deciding which goes on what. Whatever happens, I'll be happy, so long as Vicky doesn't pick, or look remotely like, the alternative princess face:

Cake for your cake-hole

And so I return to tasty blogging. Our wedding venues woes are still bringing us down - we have moved on from having nowhere to get married to having "options" - but, nevertheless, the thought of cake is cheering for all, surely?

I am also thus able to part with the greatest piece of advice I can pass on to any man, ever, wherever: it is a tremendously good idea to accompany your beloved intended to cake shops. 

When Vicky and I arrived at the babycakes store to suss out what they could offer us, the proprietor commented how refreshing it was that I was there. It seems that she is usually visited only by individual women brandishing lever-arch files and checklists. What fools! The chaps who decline to visit the store, or simply don't insist on attending hard enough, miss out on being offered, legitimately, all the free cake one could cram into one's gullet. This is the bountiful treat that I experienced one lovely morning. 

We had gone into the store with a vague idea of having a tiered cupcake extravaganza instead of a traditional cake what requires slicing (terrible symbolism, especially if you've ever been forced to sit through Picnic at Hanging Rock). Such wishy-washy ideas gave me the perfect excuse to sample just about every single cupcake flavour in stock. Some I even got to eat twice as much of: "Oh, gee, I'm just not too sure which I prefer out of these two... What's that? Why yes, I would like another one of each, thank you!"

Such was the amount of cupcake I gobbled that it is only now, months later, that I can write about the experience with a clear head. Earlier, reminisces would send me all a-tizzy with learned hyperglycemia. What a grand day!

Oh yeah, so, at our wedding guests will be presented with a cascade of sublime delights comprising "Death By Chocolate"* cupcakes, lemon-meringue pies, lime coconut cupcakes and marsbars-flavour macaroons, all topped with a choco-tastic slab upon which our caketoppers can rest.

Oh, and we'll be getting a second cake made for us by the famous Dot of York.

Oh, and then I heard that it was possible to have dinosaur-shaped Partysaurus cakes, so we'll probably get one of those, too.

You guys like cake, right?

Oh, and there'll be a lolly buffet too. What a grand day it'll be!

*Actual death not guaranteed and hopefully unlikely. 

bow-tying your bow tie

I bought a bow tie for my buck's wingding. I didn't know how to tie the mofo. I looked up this video.




I achieved moderate success:

Still stuffed.

This weekend has been a touch of a fizzer. Vicky and I scoured Fremantle in search of alternative wedding ceremony venues. We didn't have much luck. To sum it up for you, the alternative venues that the City of Fremantle have suggested for us, to compensate for their bungling of construction timetables, are:

1. A decrepit, vacated office building.
2. Yet another beachside venue currently adjacent to construction work.
3. A squarish patch of grass between two major roads, overlooked by a disused warehouse and home to some of the local drunks.
4. A nature reserve contaminated with asbestos.
5. A lovely riverside park underneath a highway traffic bridge. 

Bravo, CoF! You have truly excelled here. Unfortunately, I have some small problems with all of the above. Allow me to spell them out below:

1. I don't want to feel as though I am going to work on my wedding day, especially if my workplace has rotten, asymmetrical, inconsistent carpeting; paint peeling from the walls; a funny smell; and rooms too small to fit most of my guests in easily enough.
2. If we wanted to get married on the beach nearby a construction site, we would remain at bather's beach, thank you. It is much, much closer to our reception venue, has a lovely sheltering limestone art gallery to host the nuptials, and comes with fewer grots. 
3. I think I would feel slightly cheated to pay for the use of some moderately-tended lawn sandwiched between busy pedestrian and automobile traffic and open to all. I'd also feel slightly guilty to inconvenience the delightful tramps who may live there. 
4. I am deathly allergic to dying of asbestos-related diseases. The ineffective intermittent quarantine fencing doesn't really make for pleasing photographs either, I'll wager. 
5. In the hopes that the ceaseless roar of traffic overhead wouldn't drown out our heartfelt vows, this venue would be just about perfect. Sadly, I have this ridiculous hang-up about feeling like a common troll while loitering under a bridge. Furthermore, to do so would lend additional weight to Vicky's argument that we ought to have troll-doll wedding caketoppers. This won't do. I've already bought the princess Lego piece that looks like her and I'm not having my money wasted.

Luckily, we are fine-tuning a Plan B. Is it possible to get married on a boat? Even if the boat is not at-sea?

the carnage

Here is how the kidogo arthouse looked when we booked it for a wedding do (aka "the good ol' days):

Here is how it looks these days (aka "things aren't as good as they used to be"):

Sure, we were planning to get married inside the building, rather than out, but you can see why we are mightily cheesed off. It's a bit much to aks our guests to come prepared with helmets and blundstones and fluro vests, mind the portaloo on yer way in, that's a dapper guest.

Matt's pre-wedding gentlemen's wingding for gentlemen

Still distraught at the discovery that our wedding is doomed, my mind has desperately turned to happier notions and other excuses to drink to excess. If it does turn out that the world will end on my wedding day (literally, rather than figuratively), I am going to have a smashing party with my chums beforehand.

Accordingly, I want to host a "buck's party" at a croquet club. We can carouse and smash balls around a bit. What's not to like? I'll let the invites explain:

Hullo chaps,

I'll be getting married soon and, to honour the rich tradition of marriage, I will also be keen to follow the tradition of pre-wedding libations with my gentlemen friends. This will allow us to talk freely about the stock market, shoe buffers, bespoke tailoring, the declining work ethic among today's domestics, and tits - all without "women" nagging us to suck in our manly guts.

Croquet seems to me the most conducive activity for such larks. We can quietly while away the hours knocking balls around with mallets, drinking snifters and laughing heartily. Then, when thoroughly sick of the game, we can go to a pub.

I'm not sure which club to go to yet. Como and Vic Park are the front-runners. Como looks to have better bar facilities but Vic Park might be easier for you fellows to get there and away with beers under your belts. I'll have my dogsbody look into the matter and report back soon. Derek, hop to it, will you.

The important point is to clear all other appointments from your daybooks and put this in.

Thank you and good day.

Matt, esq.

Playing croquet will also give me an excuse to dress like the dapper character above. I have heard that some to-be-grooms are often forced to don horrid attire, such as latex bodysuits, womens' underthings or a chicken-feather suit. Needing to dress so as to meet the croquet club's dress code will mean that all those things are out of the question, thank heavens. I don't want to look stupid.

I'll also need to buy a bowtie. Let the research begin!

Things Could Be Worse

Although the City of Fremantle is trying its best (by doing its least) to ruin our nuptial splendor (details in yesterday's post), it's worthwhile to remember that Things Could Be Worse: 

<http://tragedyseries.tumblr.com/post/7970199501>

 - but we are nevertheless still interested in any alternative wedding ceremony venue suggestions.

And there's an upside to our wedding coinciding with Armageddon, too.

We can get t-shirts to wear for the next day!

This of course assumes that we will survive both the second coming and the wedding process. Both will be pretty full-on.

The wedding is ruined! The world is ending!

Today we got some munted news: our ceremony venue is likely to be hideous and under construction at the time we wish to be married. The whole place is getting tarted up for some world sailing championships in December and, just like a proper tart, before she spends good money artificially improving her appearance for foreign sailors, she must first wreck her body by ripping up the good bits and putting in some fake bodyscaping and artificial artwork. 

Apparently, the "minimal" construction work that would be finished in time for our wedding looks to take longer than originally planned. Who would have thought?

Do they not realise that sailors spend their lives at sea, surrounded by creaking wood, ropes and smelly drunks with hooks for hands? Any sight of dry land is glorious to a sailor's one good eye! This $250,000 (or $250, I'm not too sure) is not money well spent. Fremantle could have bought an AFL premiership with that money, which they arguably need more. 

Vicky is mighty miffed. Me, I have taken to drink. Considering that I may be considered to drink too much already, and am thus taking to drink on top of pre-exisiting heavy drinking, you can imagine our distress. 

This evening, several glasses of wine in, Vicky has started on the google to find other places in Freo that might do for a nice stop-gap ceremony at least. In a vegetable-protein-ham-substitute fisted way, I tried to help by seeing if meteorologists could predict weather nearly 3 months in advance. If the weather looks to be grand, we can get married in a park or on a nice street or something. Instead, I made a far more gruesome discovery: our wedding date is Judgement Day, which I guess, at least, makes the whole problem with slack construction workers in Fremantle "working" too slowly on an unnecessary project rather moot. 

This won't be like all those other Judgement Days that have come and gone with nary a rapturous applause, no sir. This one, allegedly, will be the culmination of all the other ones. Got that? All those other Judgement Day predictions have been correct. They were the correct date that the end of the world started, which is probably why my vegetables have failed to grow well in the garden ever since. 

I cannot say that I am rapt with the notion. 

But just in case it's wrong, or I'm not saved, can anybody recommend some good venues in Fremantle to get married at?

Wedding songs (a licky boom boom down)

Just quickly, to be a man of my word (important practice for wedding vows), here is the next blog and it is not about wedding clothes. 

You know what else I have been going mental about lately? The wedding songs. 

I may well be a mad man. I am considering play-listing all the songs in order on my ipod - to follow through ceremony, reception and party-disco - rather than simply picking out songs that we like and putting them on shuffle. 

The reception/disco part will last about 6 hours, from the 6pm start until whenever the archaic liquor licensing laws require us to stop. Can I seriously list out at least 6 hours' worth of songs in an order I like? I think I will have to. If I just hit shuffle, the songs might not play in an order that I like, or which is most conducive to a bell-curve of escalating fun and inebriation. Snow's Informer, for example, might commence blasting when people are still arriving at the venue, or trying to enjoy their meals without their eyes bugging out in disbelief, rather than when Vicky has had enough to drink to think that dancing on tables is a fantastic idea. That would be optimum and spectacular, though it requires foresight and careful planning. 

Ooh - Vicky's just piped up with a smashing idea. We are going to have a wine/champage/beer tasting party soon to get our friends and families to help us out picking the wedding booze. Vick's suggested we can have a playlist party too. Win.

Shoes: the finale (a self-help guide to getting it on)

I have long promised to write a bit of a blog about the things what I have learned (good grammar not being one of them - I'm already full-brim on that'n) in the lead-up to my wedding. People have questions, it seems, and I'm all for giving the public what it wants, within reason, mind. You may consider me your helper flunky. 

Admittedly, most of these questions have been aksed of me by many-footed caterpillars while I have been in the midst of fevered, opiate-induced hallucinations, which really only means that I should go to bed earlier, stop thinking about footwear, stop drinking Vicky's special 'women's tea', and just come to terms with the fact that not that many people read the blog. 

I digress. "Your blog is all very well and good-" these caterpillars say, to which I inject with a hearty cry of, "Thank you! Most gracious!" and a preposterous attempt to shake all their hands in gratitude. 

"But!" they continue, "it does not help us, you see. All we have learned is that you have learned about the various conventions, attitudes and mechanistics of menswear, but we are still in the dark about what those lessons actually are. Our own knowledge remains confined to how to eat the vegetables you are vainly (and half-heartedly, it must be admitted) trying to grow, and how to walk with dignity, never tripping ourselves up on our hundreds of feet." Hereupon, they take great big drags of apple tobacco from their hookahs and puff a smoke-ring around my face.

Accordingly, I will write some updates about what's what in formalwear for anybody who may be interested. 

Please note that this is in no way a dress code to be followed to guarantee entrance at my wedding. Other than asking people to make a bit of an effort to dress nicely, there is no obligation or expectation for any guests to dress any particular way. My obsessions are mine alone and if you'd prefer to attend in a crushed velvet blazer and tweed cap, that will probably be fine. Clearly, I will permit shoes made of canvas, too.

I will start, obviously, with shoes and what I have been carrying on about: the difference between oxfords/balmorals and derbys/bluchers. The difference between the terminology on either side of the slash can be summarised as pom/yank.

I think most of my friends' dress shoes are derbys; certainly all the shoes I had for work/weddings/funerals have been these. They are distinguished by their 'open' laces, which mostly means that the part where the lace-holes go has been sewn onto the shoe itself, as per the image below.

(By the way, I did try to think of a joke about 'lace-hole' but I couldn't work one in seamlessly enough.)

Notice how the vamp (the decidedly unsexy, non-dangerous front part of the shoe, covering the toes and instep) has the quarters (which are the back two parts of the shoe, from the heel-end to midpoint) sewn on top. This is what distinguishes a derby. The laces-bit is "open", on top of the vamp/front.

Compare this to the oxford:

If you are exceedingly clever, you will note these are a different colour. This is immaterial to my lesson. The key is that the vamp (the front bit) is sewn on top of the quarters (the back bit, with the laces). In this case, the tongue of the shoe will also usually be separate and sewn onto the vamp. In the derbies, the tongue is usually an extension of the vamp; it is the same piece of material.  

There are lots of reasons why people consider the oxford to be a more formal shoe than the derby. The key one, to my mind, is that it's more difficult for cobblers to make oxfords well, so they cost more. If things cost more, they are generally considered special occasion items. They are in my case, at any rate.

Obviously you can get shoes without laces, too. If they come with a buckle or strap in place of laces, the cool kids call them "monks". I will not go into these. Considering monks are supposed to be chaste, I doubt that many of them will also get married. (I will also pass over the joke about monks, living under vows of poverty and obedience, being ideal candidates for marriage.)

Now, look back at the derby. See those holes? That's brogueing, a fancy way of saying "decorative punched holes". Generally, the more decorative the shoe, the less formal it is. The derby above is also what's known as a "half brogue" because it has that straight cap-toe. To be considered a "full brogue", they will be wingtips, which, instead of a straight cap, has a pointy bit at the front, like a squiggly bracket ({):

The oxfords, without the brogueing, are called - surprise, surprise - "plain". 

And that's as much as I can be bothered writing about the different styles, apart from quickly mentioning that, in addition to captoes and wingtips, you can also get "split toes", which have stitching up the middle of the vamp. Avoid these. They're rubbish.

Now, if you also want to be lectured about the materials, read on. I'll make it quick (said the bishop to the bride).

Most shoes are made from leather. Before I retread my vegetarian agenda, I will cover the basics. Avoid "corrected grain" leather shoes. These are crap. "Corrected" is a euphemism for "shitty" in the same way that "never-before seen footage" means "boring to watch". 

Essentially, if shoes are "corrected", it means they have sanded off the rubbish bits of the animal hide (scars, etc) and hidden these with a special plastic coating. This coating will flake off and look awful as you wear the shoes in. Instead, aim for "full grain", which means that the leather was top quality to begin with. In addition to full grain, you could also keep an eye out for shell cordovan. This is a euphemism, too, for "horse's arse", although being made of horses' arses is apparently quite a good thing: the shoes are longer lasting and more durable than ones made from cows or baby seals. Beware, though, that cordovan can also be a colour as well as a material, just to keep things simple.

Now, before you cry "hypocrite!", being familiar with my earlier conundrum, allow me to gently suggest that one can bear all these tips in mind when shopping for some excellent quality leather shoes second-hand. In this way, not only do fewer horses have to lose their arses, I am also able to push my environmentalist agenda as well as my vegetarian one. 

Seriously, the reason that some shoes cost nearly $1,000 and some cost $45 is that the more expensive ones (should, if you're savvy) last more than a lifetime. The soles will be welted on, instead of glued, for one thing, which means they can be replaced as they wear through. Isn't it better just to get one pair of shoes, even second hand, that look great and can be cobbled throughout your life, rather than having to try on new shoes every year or so as the soles wear through and the whole thing has to be thrown away and replaced, forcing you to take a trip back to the shoe-shop and try on awful things while a spotty teenager stands awkwardly nearby and you are sweating because you hate trying on shoes and could be at the pub instead and you're worried about sweating in those shoes that you're trying on and then thinking about all the other people who may have tried them on before you, sweating their own mould-infested sweat into the same shoe and how much protection can a cotton sock offer you, anyway? None, that's how much! Oh god this is awful; why didn't I just follow that nice blog's advice in the first place and get good-quality secondhand shoes? I could be at the pub right now, carefree and soused. 

Shoe-shopping stinks, figuratively and literally. Why wouldn't you avoid it if you could?

(Obviously, I assume that secondhand shoes are cleaned and treated better between wearers than a spotty  teenager will bother with between try-ons in department stores.)

Shoes, hey? Now you know.

And yes, although I am still a wee bit too knowledgeable about shoes, I can confirm that I remain front-bottom free. This is just as well. Gay marriage is still (!) illegal in this country, despite our atheist prime minister. Incidentally, I am going to aks our celebrant if she can replace the words "marriage is defined as the union of a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others" with "marriage is defined as the union of two individuals" because I'm rather sympathetic to the gays.

Look at that! Environmentalist, vegetarian, and now homosexual agendas all pushed in the one post! Tune in next time when I talk about trying to get the "to the exclusion of all others" part removed and push for deregulated trading hours in WA, all in a sneaky attempt to destroy families and western civilisation as you know it.  Just 'cause, you know.